


Alone in This Story's Pages

by Medie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:24:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All things change. The worlds will go on. However much time she has left, Tinker Bell will spend making sure this place survives it. The rest of the realms may fall to dust, but she will spend every last iota of magic she has ensuring Neverland survives. She can't stop all of it, but she can do this one thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone in This Story's Pages

There is a world beyond the forest and everyone knows this. Other realms across the sea, over the mountains, and beneath the earth. All faeries know these secrets, all faeries know there worlds beyond even those, worlds which lie not beyond mountains or seas, but beyond the air and sky around them. 

All faeries know of these worlds, but only a very few (only the one) may reach them. 

Tinker Bell is not like her sisters. She never has been. While she does not envy them their purpose in life, she has always known that she did not share it. Long before she brings Neverland into existence, drawn from the cries of the lonely and shaped into a sanctuary for all. Long before she crafts its seas and shapes its shores from the imaginations of so many children. Indeed, long before she becomes a legend among the sisters she doesn't understand. She has always known her purpose lay separate and distinct from theirs. From her earliest days of ferrying dust from the mines to their home in the clouds to the day she hears Peter's cries on the wind, she has known it.

Just as she has always known so much more. Tinker Bell can feel the storm waiting just beyond the horizon. There's a magic in the air. Something dark and forbidden being birthed into existence, held in check for a day not so far off.

There's no stopping it, Tinker Bell knows that. For as much as she can feel it being born, she can feel the inevitability of its escape. It _will_ get loose. It will overtake the land and there will be no escaping it.

There's a frustration that comes with such knowledge. A frustration and a sharp awareness of the way the world works and all the ways that it doesn't.

They can fight, they might even change it, but there's no will in the eyes of the others to do so. No imagination. They can't see all that is so imminently obvious to Tinker Bell. 

The knowledge of that weighs on her, pulls at her, and Tinker Bell can feel time turning traitor against her. She spends more and more time in Neverland, going from there to a land of machines and monsters made of metal, answering the cries of those abandoned by their own. 

Only rarely does she return to her sisters and it grows more difficult each time. They look at her like she is a stranger, and she is, but moreover she can see how deep their denial goes. They cannot see _anything_ and she wants to weep for them. 

Instead, she sits amongst them and tries quiet reason instead.

"You made a mistake," she tells the Blue Fairy on one such visit. The oldest of her younger sisters, the wisest among them, and still so terribly young. "With Nova." 

Blue's eyes fill with confusion. "How so?" 

"The dwarf." Tinker Bell sits on the clouds, her bare feet dangling beneath her, and she plucks at the spare green fabric of her dress. She eschews the frippery of her sisters' gowns. As lovely as they look on her sisters, they have never seemed right against her skin. "They're in love."

Blue sighs. "But love is not everything."

Tinker Bell laughs. How bizarre to hear such words from a fairy and how painful. She shuts her eyes against it in order to speak. "Yes it is. We are faeries, sister. For us, love is not just everything, it is the only thing. It breathes life into our magic, our power, and grounds itself beneath every dream we build." It is love which powers Neverland and all its mysteries, love which makes it glow and shine, filling the days with adventure and magic so powerful even Tinker Bell is staggered by it.

"Theirs is a love we've never seen before," Blue says, tentative and Tinker Bell's heart beats like wings to hear it. _Yes. Doubt. Question. See everything around you. Feel the weight of what's to come._

She does not give voice to the plea, lets it sit heavy in her thoughts instead and dares to let herself hope. 

Blue looks at her. "I know you think such a thing might be a miracle. Something that might change us all for the better." 

"A _dwarf_ has known love," Tinker Bell bursts out. "Never before has this happened in all our history."

"Yes," Blue nods. "And we dare not take the chance. The damage could be too great." 

Damage. Tinker Bell again closes her eyes. "The worlds will continue," she says, her voice weary. "The worlds will always continue. It's us that you fear for." And that is the truth of all of it. It always has been. They fear not for the world around them, but their own place in it. "The world may not always need us." Peter will not always need her. Neither the other children under her protection. She is their Tinker Bell, but they will not always be her children. She's accepted this and the reminder of it every time she sets foot to earth and feels the promise of change buried in its depths.

"No simple romance between a dwarf and a fairy may endanger that." She sets off from the clouds, eager to be away from her siblings and the course on which they're fixed. "Revisit the matter, little sister. While you still have the chance." 

She barely enters the clouds before she's gone again, dropping out of the world and into Neverland with the ease of a breath. It's always been that way for her, walking into other worlds as easily as a human might step through a door, but none of them have ever made her smile quite like Neverland. 

It's beautiful from any angle, her little sanctuary from all the worlds and all the realms, but seeing it from the sky soothes her in a way she'll never be able to explain. 

Overjoyed to be home Tinker Bell spins in a delicate pirouette as she aims for the familiar shores, sprinkling fairy dust over everything in her wake. 

Here, instead of the cries of the lonely, she hears the laughter of the Lost Boys with Peter crowing out the loudest as always. He's lost his shadow again and she grins to herself at his boisterous protest. She'll visit them in time, but first there is another of her lost ones she must check on.

She knows just as soon as she's found him. She need not look to know the ship is beneath her. She can feel the furious misery that is the siren song of Hook's presence in her land. 

Tinker Bell stops and looks down at the Jolly Roger with a sigh. A grown man he might be, but Hook is one of her Lost Boys all the same. The magic he used to enter Neverland matters little in that respect. She built this realm to be a sanctuary to the lost and the broken. For a person to find their way to its shores, their suffering must be vast, and few have known suffering quite so great as his. 

She dare not try and tend to Hook as she does Peter and the others. He would see her not as a friend and ally, but a weapon to be used against Rumpelstiltskin. His rage is yet too great to understand the folly of such a choice. 

Still...

"Hark," he rasps, when she strays too close to the deck, "is that the flutter of fairy wings I hear? Come to visit again, have we, my dear Tink?"

She rolls her eyes, but settles before him just the same. "You need watching, my dear Captain." 

His grin is a dark thing as he looks her over. She dare not pretend there's any concern in the way Hook scrutinizes her, but those eyes miss little. He frowns. "You've been back haven't you?"

She nods once and his eyes darken further. "Glutton for punishment is what you are." 

"Perhaps," she says, careful where she steps on the deck. Bare feet and wooden decks do not good bedfellows make. Hook watches her move, forever mindful of her presence (smart man in that sense), and she sees his gaze flick to her feet.

Tinker Bell nearly grins. She'll find another pair of slippers, delicate and impossibly beautiful, on the shores come morning. It is their little unspoken tradition. One of the few that tells of the man behind Hook's eyes. 

Some day, she may even wear those shoes in his presence. A message received and returned.

"Something is coming," she says, turning away from him. The horizon in Neverland is a wonder. Each star shining bright in the night sky, perfect and magical, and she hurts to think of what may become of it. 

She won't answer his questions. She won't tell him anything of Rumpelstiltskin or the new blood he's shed. She won't tell him of the sister that died at Rumpelstiltskin's hands, or the fury that has crept its way into her soul and the certainty that one day there will be a reckoning between she and the Dark One for this.

Tinker Bell dare not, for she sees what lies beyond that reckoning. She sees her blood, she sees flame, and she sees Hook at the center of it all.

One day her life will be in his hands. His decision the one thing between life and oblivion. 

Tinker Bell curls her fingers into the ship's rigging, feeling the rope rough against her skin, and she shuts her eyes. Whether he will kill Rumpelstiltskin or save her on that fateful day, she doesn't know. 

All things change. The worlds will go on. However much time she has left, Tinker Bell will spend making sure this place survives it. The rest of the realms may fall to dust, but she will spend every last iota of magic she has ensuring Neverland survives. She can't stop all of it, but she can do this one thing. 

Hook's hand, his fingers, brush her shoulder. She shivers. "You're afraid." There's shock in his voice. "The greatest of the faeries is _terrified_." 

"All creatures know fear, Captain," she says, and risks looking at him. "Why should I be any different?"

Hook shocks her by smiling. He leans forward, slow and careful, and touches his lips to her cheek. "Because, my dear Tink, you are you. Glorious, maddening, and perfectly you and I should miss this little dance of ours if you became like all the rest."

She grins and darts away from him, taking to the skies once more. "Oh, we will always dance, my dear Captain."

For it is the way of their world and the story which birthed it.


End file.
